Raincoast Research is based in the Salmon Forest between Kingcome and Knight Inlets due east of Northern Vancouver Island. Echo Bay is a micro-community of only 40 people. Most of the houses are on floats as is the Post Office. There is a one-room school at the head of the bay. The ten to fifteen children arrive by boat and the curriculum includes studying life in the tiny creek behind the school. While families are spread throughout the archipelago, Echo Bay has supported human life for ten thousand years. A broad white beach at the head of the bay is made of the clam and barnacle shells from a thousand feasts.

The mail comes three times a week by seaplane there are no roads or ferries to or from Echo Bay. The only television signal is by satellite, and the only phones are cell phones. The recent development of two-way satellite Internet has, however, brought Echo Bay into the age of high-speed communication. At Halloween the children trick or treat by boat and they race the ravens for eggs at Easter. The community consists of fishermen, artists, DFO patrolman, homesteaders and one whale researcher.

Echo Bay offers an independent life, in the wilderness, where children grow up free from the pressures of consumerism, drugs and over-crowded schools.

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